After I Lost Our Baby, My Husband Chose His Sister

Three nights after the anniversary, I couldn't sleep. The burns on my arms had stopped screaming, but they still ached under the bandages. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the old townhouse settle around me.

At 1:47 AM, I gave up. I pulled on my robe and went downstairs for water.

The hallway on the second floor was dark except for a thin line of light under Jolene's door. Music drifted through. Something classical. Violin and piano.

I stopped.

The door wasn't fully closed. There was a gap, maybe two inches wide. I don't know why I looked. Maybe I was tired. Maybe some part of me already knew.

Through that gap, I saw her.

Jolene was standing in the middle of her bedroom. Standing. No wheelchair. No trembling legs. No careful, painful transfers. She wore a white silk nightgown that moved like water around her body as she turned. Her feet were bare. Her arms lifted above her head. She spun slowly, gracefully, her dark hair fanning out behind her.

She was dancing.

I stood frozen in the hallway. My heart slammed against my ribs. The music swelled. Jolene laughed softly, a sound of pure joy, and did a small leap. Her legs bent and straightened with perfect control. Fluid. Strong. Healthy.

I watched for a full minute. Maybe longer. My brain couldn't catch up to what my eyes were seeing.

Then I turned and walked back to my room. I didn't run. I didn't make a sound. I just walked.

I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark and pressed both hands against my mouth.

---

The next morning, I found Connor in his study. He was on a call, but I didn't care. I walked in and closed the door behind me.

He glanced up, annoyed. "Rosemary, I'm—"

"I saw Jolene walking last night."

Connor went still. He said something into his phone—I didn't hear what—and hung up. He set the phone down slowly. "What?"

"Last night. Around two in the morning. I saw her through her bedroom door. She was standing. Dancing. She's not paralyzed, Connor."

His jaw tightened. "You saw her through her door."

"Yes."

"So you were spying on her."

"I wasn't—" I stopped. Took a breath. "Connor, she was walking. Normally. Like nothing was ever wrong."

Connor stood up. His face had gone cold. "Do you hear yourself right now?"

"I know what I saw."

"You saw my sister—who has been in a wheelchair for six years—dancing in her bedroom in the middle of the night." His voice was flat. Hard. "Do you know how insane that sounds?"

"I'm not making this up."

"Aren't you?" He stepped around the desk. "You've been acting strange for weeks. Distant. Resentful. And now you're inventing stories about Jolene to—what? Get my attention? Make me choose between you?"

My throat closed. "Connor, please. Just ask her. Or check the security footage. There are cameras in the hallway—"

"There's nothing to check." His voice cut like glass. "Because nothing happened. You're jealous of the time I spend with her. You always have been. And now you're so desperate that you're making up lies about a woman who can't even defend herself."

"She can defend herself just fine," I whispered. "She was standing on her own two legs."

Connor's hand slammed down on the desk. I flinched.

"Enough." His voice shook. "I don't want to hear another word about this. Not one."

I stared at him. At the man I'd loved for seven years. The man I'd given up everything for.

He looked at me like I was a stranger. Like I was the problem.

I turned and walked out.

---

That afternoon, Jolene called Connor from upstairs. I was in the kitchen when I heard her voice, high and broken.

"Connor? Can you come up here? Please?"

I heard his footsteps on the stairs. Then the low murmur of voices. Then Jolene crying.

Twenty minutes later, Connor came back down. His face was stone.

"Pack your things," he said.

"What?"

"You're moving to the third floor. The guest room."

I blinked. "Connor—"

"Jolene doesn't feel safe around you anymore." His voice was clipped. Mechanical. "After what you accused her of, she's terrified. She asked me if you might hurt her."

"I would never—"

"I don't care." He walked past me toward his study. "You'll stay on the third floor until you can prove to me that you're stable. And I'm locking up your restoration tools. All of them."

I followed him. "You can't do that."

"I just did."

He opened the hall closet and started pulling out my cases. My brushes. My solvents. The magnifying loupes my mentor gave me when I graduated. He carried them all into the storage room and locked the door.

I stood there watching him take away the only things I had left.

---

Two weeks later, a photographer came to the house.

Jolene had asked Connor for a favor. She wanted professional portraits. "Something to remember this time by," she'd said. "While I still have you."

Connor agreed.

I watched from the top of the stairs as they posed in the living room. Jolene sat in her wheelchair in a cream lace dress, her hair curled and pinned like a bride. Connor knelt beside her, one hand on the armrest, his head tilted toward hers. The photographer kept saying, "Beautiful. Perfect. Just like that."

Jolene smiled up at Connor like he'd hung the moon.

Connor smiled back.

They looked like a couple.

A week later, the photos came back. Connor had them framed. He hung one in the entryway. One in the living room. One in the upstairs hallway outside Jolene's door.

I walked past them every day.

Every single day.